International Coalition For Human Rights in the Philippines
Press Release
July 23, 2024
“We salute the 100 political prisoners in Negros Region jails who refused three meals yesterday to dramatise their call on President Marcos Jr to immediately release 90 sick and 102 elderly political prisoners on humanitarian grounds, to stop the repression of NGOs which assist farmers and indigenous peoples, and to re-start the peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP)”, said Mr Peter Murphy, Chairperson of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines today.
According to the national human rights alliance Karapatan and the national organisation of families of political prisoners, Kapatid, there are now 755 political prisoners held in jails across the Philippines.
The Justice Department has used the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 to freeze the accounts of the longstanding Paghida-et sa Kauswagan Development Group (PGD) in Negros Occidental and the Community Empowerment Resource Network (CerNet) in Cebu, freezing the accounts of their officers, and issuing warrants of arrest against them.
“There is no basis for these malicious charges against PGD and CerNet, which have a long record of aiding farmers and indigenous peoples suffering from natural disasters as well as the man-made disaster of poverty,” said Murphy. “Only hearsay evidence from police officers, which appears to be concocted, has been presented to courts, which have gone ahead anyway to issue warrants on such flimsy material.
“ICHRP demands that the Justice Department end this new wave of political persecution of selfless civilian organisations,” said Murphy. “The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) is driving this new repression, which is an abuse of judicial process. NTF-ELCAC should be abolished. The US, Australia, Canada and South Korea should immediately cut military aid to this lawless regime.”
July 22 was the day for President Marcos Jr’s State of the Nation Address (SONA). It was marked by protest rallies in Manila and other cities in the Philippines, and also in Australia, Canada and the United States. The angry message from the protests and effigy burnings was that the workers, the farmers, the people are hungry and poor, while the Marcos and Duterte dynasties fight each other for plunder, and Marcos Jr allows the US military to bring the country closer to war with China.
“ICHRP salutes all the Filipino people and their organisations who took part in People’s SONA 2024 to resist the repression and persist in their demands for democracy, self-determination, justice and peace,” concluded Murphy.
For further comment: Peter Murphy +61 418 312 301, [email protected].
